Advanced Learning yet to release a CMIS Facility patch for tomorrow's census

[JDiaz]

Hello,

 

I am frustrated that I have received this email from Advanced Learning a few minutes ago:

http://ui.isend-itineris.co.uk/view.aspx?e=ef8e87349a9b479e8b810070d792cc1e&t=57749c99e9&r=6ef5d82b3b

telling us that we will need to re-patch our Facility CMIS.

 

We have identified this affects ~12 of our schools, which is not good providing the that Census day is tomorrow.

 

I know that it doesn't need to be submitted tomorrow, but we are still very unhappy about this. For reference our SIMS schools were upgraded during the summer with no further issues. They just released the current version on 1st September.

 

How do other vendors deal with this? Other than SIMS, have you had a smooth upgrade this time? I am curious to know if this is extended or if it is just AL.

 

- Frustrated J.

Edited October 1, 2014 by JDiaz

[6Foot2]

I have just been on the website and downloaded the files available there. We have been told that this is a priority and that we should cease all other work until the upgrade is complete. However we cannot start until after morning roll call.

 

Waiting...

[Achandler]

I've doen the update this morning at 7am. So far there is no problems to report, although obviously people are only just arriving!

 

With regards to other vendors, it happens with them all, this isn't the first and won't be the last time for CMIS. But SIMS has had similar issues in the past with updates being late or breaking things.

[Banjo]

Sims is a patch or fileset - Facility is has to be reinstalled. Facility census releases have always come out late, usually just after you have updated to the latest census release, another one pops up to fix another bug.

[michael2k6]

Hi all,

 

Many apologies for the timing of this census patch. I can appreciate that receiving the patch when you did and needing to install it as soon as possible was disruptive and at the very least inconvenient.

We'll be doing all we can to ensure that we don't have a repeat of it in the future. The reasons for this in part are the late requirements from the DFE received in August and so in terms of development cycle left less time than would be desired for testing; with obvious consequences. As I say we'll do all we can in future to mitigate this risk so that we avoid a repeat late release of a new version or patch.

 

Just to confirm for those who don't know, a new release of Facility (where ePortal upgrade is not needed) is pretty much just a new fileset anyway; you take a backup of the database, disconnect the users from the share on the server, run the setup file and it unpacks over the old version. You then have to do the same for any addons you have (which are usually just a couple of DLL's unpacking so take seconds). This process typically takes around 10 - 20 minutes including the backup (I really hope I've not angered anyone there; please correct me if I'm wrong I've not done it personally in a long time!) and the users can then have access to the network share back, and they just use the same shortcut on their clients to carry on.

ePortal can continue to be used during that process so it wouldn't disrupt class registers etc.

 

By no means am I suggesting that the short amount of time and the nature of it being central on a server and not client based excuses the timing of the release (and I know 20 minutes in a school environment is a long time); I just want to clear up to those without Facility experience that it's just the install on the server and nothing client side that would need updating and take the opportunity to apologise for the timing.

 

Mic Sanderson

Customer Success Manager

Advanced Learning

[GREED]

From a completely independent and unbiased view I just wanted to add, to the benefit of Capita, Advanced Learning and all the others, the DfE ONCE AGAIN released very late changes to census requirements (some validation errors picked up as late as Monday). This is a constant battle and one that never ever changes despite constant complaints by many including me. While one would argue this is not the school's problem, I have huge sympathy for the guys at the suppliers of MIS, having done this myself up to last year.

 

This is one big reason why I had huge hopes and backing for DX...